I presume your Grand Children are with you, and doubt not that they will afford you every consolation that existing Circumstances will admit. Present… - Elizabeth Willing Powel

Powel: Well, Doctor, what have we got?
Benjamin Franklin: A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.
Powel: And why not keep it?
Franklin: Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.

Your resignation wou'd elate the Enemies of good Government...They would say that you were actuated by Principles of self-Love alone—that you saw the Post was not tenable with any Prospect of adding to your Fame. The antifederalists would use it as an argument for dissolving the Union, and would urge that you, from Experience, had found the present System a bad one, and had, artfully, withdrawn from it that you might not be crushed under its Ruins.

I have certainly experienced severe trials, and some hard dispensations of Providence … To travel with some dignity, innocence, and usefulness, down the Road which leads from the Morning of Youth to the Night of the Grave, is perhaps as much as we can flatter ourselves with accomplishing.